


In Black, In White, In Grey

by orphan_account



Category: NSYNC
Genre: AU, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-10
Updated: 2010-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mansion inhabited by ghosts, an iron fist, the people left behind and everything else that lingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Black, In White, In Grey

**Author's Note:**

> Incomplete WIP. Will never be finished.

**CRADLE**

The feel of ghosts isn't cold; it's more a hint of dry warmth, a brief spell of summer. JC feels it as he takes Christina's hand. They glide to the roof smoothly, Christina with her feet still and primly together, JC's feet walking on air, his legs complying with instinct even if there was no solid ground. Christina drifts above him, sometimes looking down to smile, the tips of her hair changing into a furious red as she focuses so she won't drop JC. Her outline shimmers with the moonlight.

"You okay?" she asks. Her voice is wispy like the rest of her. "I know how you are with heights."

"I'm okay," he says, looking up at her. This still amazes him, these occasional flights to the roof with Christina. He risks falling to his death every time since she is easily distracted.

Gentle snow, fat lazy flakes of it drift through Christina and land on JC's head like light touches. He sees the slate gray sky, forbidding and ugly and wonders how it could produce such beautiful things.

His feet land on the roof and he looks down first to see where he was. He has a dreadful fear of falling and she always wants a different spot on the roof. JC risks it anyway, even if Christina forgets sometimes that he's still alive.

"You're almost like a ghost, JC," Christina had said at one point. "You're stuck here like I am."

JC draws his knees closer to him and huddles. He forgot his coat again and here on the roof, the shingles sharp and icy, he wishes for it desperately. If Lance had reminded him, he thought.

Christina starts to sing a lullaby, but the words are all wrong and they are cruel. They are about girls who are sacrificed to gods in flaming pyres and boys who try to rescue them only to meet their deaths. A bloody swordfight, a dragon, a cruel spell by a magician, whatever suited Christina's fancy, because all she knew of songs were lullabies taught to her by someone poisoned.

Sometimes JC joins in, sometimes not. Christina never minds. Her voice now is weak and ethereal, although she thinks it was more powerful before when she was alive, but that was a long time ago. There are some things that JC has learned not to ask.

He hears Chris somewhere shouting his words. Chris's obsession today are words that end in –tic.

"Erratic, aromatic, symbiotic, energetic," Chris yells from somewhere JC can only identify as somewhere near the ground.

JC shivers. He remembers his warm coat in his room, all black and made of fur. It made him break out in hives but he loved it and wore it out whenever he remembered that it was there.

Christina starts to sing again, and it's an old lullaby he's heard many times before. She struggles for low notes, her voice on a constant high. She sings something about a woman whose hair was turned into snakes, and the man who still loved her but was turned to stone.

"Eclectic, asthmatic."

JC feels something itch on his shoulder and scratches it. From the coat no doubt. It's a furious little red bump, which he stabs a sharp fingernail into to alleviate the itch.

She stops singing and looks down briefly. Christina says, "I was a good singer once too."

"I know," JC says. "I remember hearing you before. How many octaves?"

"I never really counted. I just sang."

JC knows the feeling too, but doesn't say anything. He hears Chris again, his words tinny and shrill. He looks down and sees Chris running in the yard, a dark blur on the pristinely white lawn. Chris looks up and meets JC's eyes.

Chris cocks his head and says,

"Pedantic, mystic, romantic." He covers his mouth after the last one and runs back into the house.

JC closes his eyes for a little while. Christina starts to sing again, this time about a mermaid so curious about land that she drags herself out of the sea, the mermaid's last breath a sigh of wonder with what she sees. This song JC knows and secretly loves. He sings along with Christina until he drowns her reedy voice out.

**SUNLIGHT**

"It's Wednesday," Chris says. "JC just told me. Come on," he beckons to Justin. Justin gets up eagerly and Joey follows, his eyes brown and amber like fallen maple leaves. He passes through Chris and Chris jumps at the sudden burst of warmth before running out to the long hallway.

The doors close behind him. He sees Joey and Justin waiting in the shadows and smiles briefly at both of them. He listens intently for any noises that aren't made by the people he likes. He looks straight ahead to the end of the hallway lined with shuttered windows. He runs to the first window and takes a deep breath.

He draws aside the curtains in one quick motion as his heart races. The winter sunlight is gloriously bright, reflecting off the snow and the icicles from the trees like lances. He runs and hides in the shadows between the shuttered window and the window leaking light.

Justin runs into the light. Justin is always stiff in the glow of the first window. Sometimes he sits down with his head bowed, as if it's too much for him. This time though he stands straight and tall and looks at the light with defiance.

After a few minutes, Joey grabs the side of the curtain closest to him and draws it closed. He closes it deliberately and carefully. The curtains have golden trim at the edges and they must be closed precisely, with the golden trim touching each other but not overlapping, and the space between must not let any sunshine through. The rest of Joey fades into the barest of outlines, his arms and hands strikingly white in contrast.

A delicate balance exists here, Chris thinks. They could all get into so much trouble with this, but they do it anyway, but always carefully, always planned, always on Wednesdays.

They do it with every window. Chris first, quick and furtive, then Justin who stands, who dances with the dust motes made visible, who peers through the window, then Joey, businesslike and grim, the end of this risky dance. Chris looks at it all very distantly now and can't even remember the first time they did it.

When Joey has closed the last one, Chris sighs with relief while Justin looks sullenly at the dark fabric of the curtain.

"One day you'll get out there," Chris says.

"When?" Justin's face is mutinous.

"I don't know. But you will."

Joey speaks in low cadences. "There's nothing special out there, Justin."

"I don't believe you."

Panic rises in Chris's throat, and it's suddenly hard to talk. Words flash in his head in brief nauseating flashes, each letter painfully bright and colorful and he can't stop himself. He starts speaking when he catches his breath, his words like gunfire.

"Thrall, hall, pall, gall, stall, enthrall…"

When he stops, Justin has gone and Joey is looking at him sadly, but then these days it's hard to remember when Joey wasn't sad. Joey envelops him in a hug and Chris wants to settle into it but can't so he leans back on the wall, Joey's brief spark of heat resembling something like comfort.

**VIBRANT**

Britney's ghost is linked outside the house, in the outcrop in the back that once was a cellar. It's now just a hole, their corpses having long been buried and decomposed. She died there along with Christina and Joey. She remembers blood, how red and slick it was against her skin as she had tried to clear the blood from Joey's face. She remembers Joey's body beaten almost lifeless, his face unrecognizable. She remembers Christina's crying, how she lost her voice in the end and how she died that way, incapable of speech or song.

Her own death was an incredibly slow spectacle. All three of them were thrown into the cellar and locked in without a way out. Joey was already near death, and Britney remembers almost envying him because his way out was already there and all he had to do was wait a few more hours, a few more days at most. Christina starved to death and so did she, but Britney has the added anguish of seeing Christina go first, and see her go in agony.

There is a kind of euphoria in the final moments with death by starvation. This Britney knows first hand, even if it's hardly any consolation. She saw it in Christina's face, an ecstasy as her body ate itself trying to stay alive. She felt it herself, and it was relief and glory and painless final breaths before she lost consciousness.

Before that, Britney kept screaming.

There seems to have been some trick played on them though. Christina died weakly, her body thin and ravaged, her soaring voice ruined but she came back with a definite form and a ghostly voice. Britney screamed and fought until the end but all she is now is a force that can move flowers, a faint emanation of heat. She has to concentrate to be seen or heard. A great, roiling rage sometimes overcomes her, the unfairness that lingers with her like the smell of death itself, that she fought so hard to stay alive only to come back invisible and near powerless.

When she came to, her body was there beside her and she remembers Christina looking lost.

"Where are we?" Christina had asked.

"I don't know."

"Not hell."

"We don't know that yet." Britney had never been as scared as she was back then. After a few days, or so it seemed, Joey came back for them and told them everything he had learned because he came back first. He didn't, or couldn't tell them much.

"I don't know why we're still here," he had said. He looked at Britney, and she saw his face change into slack-jawed shock.

"You're fading."

"What?" Then she heard her own voice trail into nothing.

"Britney?" Christina's voice was laced with fear.

I'm still here.

"Britney?" Joey.

"I'M STILL HERE!" And she felt fury so pure she screamed, as she materialized into vibrant reds and yellows. She learned then what she had to do to be seen and heard, and it angered her, angers her still.

She left her corpse that day and left it forever. She rushed out of the cellar and into the night. She saw the house with its imposing stone and dark windows ahead of her and wanted to destroy it with the sheer force of her will.

Britney rarely goes outside, even if her link to this cursed place was there. She never looked behind and doesn't have even a remote curiousity. She has never had the desire to see her body rotting and infested with maggots like Joey and Christina did. She stays in the house, lives in and goes through the walls and ceiling and floor. She looks at glass and steel, in placid pools of water in the tub and the bucket in the attic that caught snow.

Sometimes, when she concentrates enough, she can manifest enough that she can see herself in mirrors, the way she wants to remember herself. Sometimes Justin sees her too, and in those brief instances, worlds of possibilities start and end in infinite loops.

She curses his life. She curses her death. Then she fades away again.

**WATERCOLOUR**

Lance takes the watercolor tube that he knows JC has left behind deliberately and squeezes some into his hand. He rubs the dark color between his palms. In the twilight of the kitchen, he can't quite tell what color it is but he smoothes it over his hair in four quick strokes. His arms are already coated with the dark paint, and he is wearing black clothes.

He likes it here in the kitchen. Its one window is small, but for some reason, the curtains here are different. They aren't made of the same heavy dark fabric as everywhere else and weak rays of light crept through on certain times of the day. Roman probably thought that the tall concrete wall outside the window blocked off most of the light, and he was right, but Lance enjoys the occasional light anyway.

He wonders how much paint JC has left. JC doesn't paint as much anymore and Lance can't help but be glad. He doesn't think JC has painted anything he has wanted to see more than once. What Lance really thinks about when he's on these quests he gives himself is whether JC knows what he's planning with Justin, or if JC does it to be kind.

Lance walks slowly to the darker recesses of the kitchen, where the black marble of the island sits. He takes a seat on a stool and waits patiently for Justin. As time passes, he barely moves and he keeps his eyes closed. He knows they can give him away.

Justin walks into the kitchen, looking around for Lance. Lance feels the spreading smile on his face as he realizes Justin truly can't see him as the familiar impatient expression threads through Justin's voice.

"Lance," Justin says. "Are you here?" Justin walks closer to him, calling his name. When Lance thinks he's close enough, he opens his eyes and grabs Justin's arm quickly when it's in his reach. Justin lets out a surprised yelp as Lance pulls him closer. He smiles, and he imagines it briefly, the picture they make. Justin, pale and sleek and startled, his arms flailing a bit before settling on Lance's waist. Himself, with only his eyes and teeth showing, or so he imagines.

"I really didn't see you," Justin says, still a bit breathless.

Lance feels like smiling even more. He slips his fingers underneath the fabric of Justin's shirt. "Good," he whispers quietly into Justin's ear. He feels Justin's hands go around to the small of his back. He licks the whorl of Justin's ear, nibbles at his earlobe and clutches Justin tighter to him.

"I really think this can work," Justin whispers.

"You still don't believe it will, don't you?" Lance hates the doubt in Justin's voice.

"We've been here too long maybe."

"Maybe." Lance pauses. He doesn't really know what's outside, other than light and snow and the other side of the walls around the house. It has to be better out there than in here, he thinks desperately.

"It has to be better outside than it is here. I hate this place," Justin says.

Lance pulls back and kisses Justin briefly on the mouth. "I'm glad we're on the same page."

Justin asks him point blank. "Who're we going to ask for help?"

With no hesitation, Lance answers back. "JC. He's the only one who can keep track of time anymore."

**JUNCTURE**

Justin approaches JC with caution. Lance always says to be careful when approaching JC and it is something that Justin never forgets, even if Lance doesn't know all the reasons why Justin keeps it in mind. He takes a deep breath as he opens the door to the attic; the candle's flame flickering as he releases his breath.

"Hey JC." Justin sits down beside JC. The floor in the attic is cold; the blanket JC is sitting on offers scant protection. The sloping roof gives the room an odd perspective that Justin has never liked. Everything seems skewed and warped here, especially when he sits with JC near the juncture of floor and roof.

"Hey Justin." JC smiles as he ducks his head down.

"Did you go flying again? Did you remember your coat?"

"Last time I flew was a month ago." JC's head is still down. He seems mesmerized by the patterns on the blanket, an old one with faded figures Justin can't discern with only the candle light.

Justin looks at JC's profile and feels a pang of protectiveness. JC is hardly fragile; Justin has seen him fight Roman, at least as much as a human can fight a being he can't even touch. JC has a core of steel, but it is sheathed and faintly rusted.

"And no, I didn't remember my coat. I don't think Lance reminded me," JC continues.

"I wish I could remember as well as he does," Justin says. He's amazed by Lance's memory.

"We're good at different things. You have poetry in there." JC touches Justin's forehead with his index finger.

"So you say." Justin can't stop the flush he feels and it makes his toes curl. "Thank you anyway." He puts down the candle in front of them and watches it for a little while. He can't quite bring himself to bring up why he is even here, guilt like a snake in his veins. He hugs his knees close to him. He notices JC fiddling with the edges of the blanket and decides to follow an impulse. He takes JC's hand in his and clasps it tightly. JC's hand is dry and rough and calloused at parts and feels just right.

Justin thinks of Lance and that feels right too, somehow.

He leans in and nudges JC's cheek with his lips. His hand tilts JC's head towards his and when their lips touch, it's the sweetest, darkest thing Justin has ever felt.

Lance kisses in quick bites and nips, Justin thinks through the hazy fog in his head. Lance tugs at earlobes with his teeth and nips at Justin's lower lip, Lance's hands are very strong and grab handfuls of flesh wherever they can. He does the same things and reacts the same way to Lance. His connection with Lance has always been primal, something careening along towards desperation. There was always love though. Justin has never lost sight of that.

He doesn't lose sight of Lance still. It's just that now, there's an equal space blooming in him, something shaped with thin limbs and a mess of wavy dark hair who goes on roofs to sing.

Justin pulls back and watches JC, who gets flustered under Justin's scrutiny and nervously lets out a little laugh.

"I love Lance." Justin looks down after speaking, unable to meet JC's eyes.

JC responds too quickly, his voice a breathless rush. "There was never any question about that. He's the one you should."

The candle flickers. He still has JC's hand in his as time ticks by, knowing this won't be the last and dreading the last when it finally comes.

Silence stretches unbroken before them.

**AIMLESS**

When she was younger and had no conception of the reality of death, Christina wished for death to happen on Fridays (who told her this, she wonders) because there was a weekend where there would be no obligations other than attending to the details of the passing itself.

She died not knowing what day it was. In the dank cellar with nothing but Britney's fading screams and another body (not him, never him, that body) not moving somewhere close to her, she died sitting with her head buried between her knees, her stomach clamoring for food, her throat dry with thirst, her heart aching for something she was losing that was somehow more vital than life.

Christina remembers all this, but it feels filtered to her now, as if wrapped with a veil she has to lift very delicately. She drifts through the house aimlessly, through the ceilings and floors, accidentally into Roman's lair before remembering that that is a bad thing she isn't supposed to do. Some habits die hard. Christina doesn't even question anymore what Roman could take from her that he hasn't already.

She seeps through one of the walls and finds herself outside. It's snowing prettily (or is it hail, big stones falling from the sky?). The walls are imposing, lined at the top with shards of dully colored broken glass gleaming like unrefined gems. The sun is peeking through the grey cover of clouds and light shines through some of the glass. She feels like she's basking in the light of a mosaic in a church, from a picture (memory?) that she can remember.

She drifts up to peek over the wall and sees nothing but trees and a road, with a line of lights parallel to the road. 'It leads to destruction' echoes in her head in Roman's worst and angriest voice (or was it Britney from before?) and she drifts back down, close to the house's main doors.

A pulse of energy drifts by her and it is hot and vibrant.

"Britney?"

A wave of reds and yellows form an outline before her and Christina marvels at how Britney can concentrate like this.

"Don't bother me now, Christina. I'm busy."

"With what?"

The lines crackle and become sharp, the figure radiates irritation.

"Christina," Britney's brittle, disembodied voice. "I hate it when you do this. You died on a Tuesday. Get it through you already. You died on a…" and Britney's voice and outline fizzle. Christina can feel Britney's rage. A patch of snow melts beneath them, revealing patches of earth and brown grass.

She remembers again. She doesn't truly forget because she can always remember it again, even if there are times when she doesn't want to. She doesn't like the pictures in her head when someone reminds her of this. She turns away from where Britney was and glides through the house as quickly as she can and thinks back.

When they were all still alive and fighting for their space in a massive house that nevertheless felt as cramped as the cellar, Christina, with no other choice, picked the little crevices and nooks that the others couldn't fit into because they were too big. Underneath the basement stairs, in a tiny crack between bookshelves, in a cupboard somewhere in the kitchen (is the library small?), just always somewhere small and private.

Now she doesn't even have to do that, or surrender to space that no one else wants. There are advantages to being like this, Christina thinks. She stops in a wall inside the house and stays in it, the wall itself a dark presence surrounding her on all sides, where she imagines it must be difficult to breathe.

It makes her feel a little bit alive.

AN END


End file.
